


sickeningly beautiful

by lonelyheartsclub_com



Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: M/M, angst :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:47:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29538426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelyheartsclub_com/pseuds/lonelyheartsclub_com
Summary: bertie explains the version of stephen he fell in love with, but only because daisy demands an answer.
Relationships: Stephen Bampton/Bertie Wells
Kudos: 6





	sickeningly beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> tw // referenced abuse

"Why did you love him, Bertie? How could you love someone as despicable as Stephen?" Daisy asked, but Bertie could see it was an afterthought of sorts, not a question she'd been burning to ask him. He looked at his sister, but he couldn't look at her for long.

Daisy and her friends were in Egypt when someone had been murdered, and so Daisy had been going over all her former cases.

"You and I knew two completely different versions of Stephen Bampton, Squashy." Bertie started. He supposed it was true, but they both had a very different image of him now, a murderer that would spend the rest of his life rotting in jail. "When I first met him, he was charming. Disgustingly so."

Daisy made a face.

"That's not enough." she demanded, and Bertie realised he'd have to explain the full story to her. "Why did you fall for him?"

"Squashy, I'm aware you're not attracted to men, but try to make an effort to understand. Take that girl you like, Amina El Maghrabi? You'd consider her charming, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, I would, but what does she have to do with this-"

"Stephen was like her. Flirted with me at every turn, and rather bluntly. Did anything he could to attract my attention, and it worked. I started to like him back. He kissed me when we were 14, and thus started our...arrangement."

She went red, as if she was imagining herself in Bertie's position. 

"I fell for him. Fast and hard. By the time a few months in our relationship had passed, I was truly smitten with him." Bertie could feel the tears pinpricking his eyes. "You could see the way I'd stare at him when I first brought him home, couldn't you?"

"I thought you had been struck with some sort of disease." she admitted. "You seemed utterly..." she trailed off, as if prompting Bertie to finish the sentence for himself. 

Bertie was curt. "In love. That's what, and I despise thinking about it."

Daisy frowned. 

"I was so madly in love with him because he gave me affection, to the point where I'd let him do anything he wanted to me so long as I'd hear him say he loved me, or that he thought I was perfect. My self worth was that horridly low that I let Stephen twist me into a completely different person."

She gave him a look of pity, and she put her hand on his. "Squinty, you absolute fool," she said it affectionately, but he still withdrew his hand.

"I'm aware I wasn't the smartest. I let him strike me, and I let him hurt me physically as well as mentally, but only because he'd kiss me and promise me he'd never do it again."

Daisy turned to stare at him, going deathly silent. Bertie could feel his heart drop and he knew Daisy's respect for him was disappearing as he admitted to all of this.

The way his sister stared at him made him think of Stephen, because most things did.

_Whenever Stephen glared at Bertie because he'd spoken out of turn or because they were in the middle of an argument, Bertie could not help but feel terrified. Stephen's eyes were a vaguely threatening green shade, and so whenever he glared, his eyes would glint an arsenic green, and it made it seem like his glare was poison. Bertie already felt he was poisonous to the touch._

"I haven't a clue what to say. I'd write him a strong worded letter, but-"

"Don't. Don't even joke about it." Bertie hissed. 

She frowned again, and Bertie looked back to Fallingford. 

_One thing about Stephen's arrest that stuck in Bertie's mind was Stephen's gaze. He gave Bertie the most malicious look he ever had, before his eyes went glassy and he burst into tears as he was being shoved into the police car._

"He was sickening. Sickeningly kind, sickeningly smart, sickeningly beautiful. Realising he murdered Mr. Curtis made me realise he was just sickening, nothing else." Bertie admitted. He laughed bitterly, and Daisy turned to face him. "To this day, I still think he got in my head far too much."

"He was horrid."

"I wish I'd realised that 4 years ago," Bertie muttered.

There were a lot of things Bertie wished for. 

But the one thing he wished for every single year when Lucy told him to blow out the candles on his cake was for Stephen to be innocent. He wished it to this day. But it would never happen, and Bertie knew it would stay a pipe dream.

**Author's Note:**

> if you ask me there was probably a lot of shoddy shit going on in their relationship but. Alas


End file.
